Big oil buying government contracts?
By on Dec 31st, 2006 at 9:31 am
Big oil buying government contracts?
“The Justice Department is investigating whether the director of a multibillion-dollar oil-trading program at the Interior Department has been paid as a consultant for oil companies hoping for contracts.
The director of the program and three subordinates, all based in Denver, have been transferred to different jobs and have been ordered to cease all contacts with the oil industry until the investigation is completed some time next spring, according to officials involved.”
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Why, that would be… conflict of interest! And we all know that is impossible for this party of persponal responsibility.
Here’s how Nicholas Kristof sees Bush‘s obituary: “George W. Bush, who achieved tremendous acclaim for his handling of the 9/11 terror attacks but left office vilified and disgraced, mired in the Iraq war and stalemated at home, his hard-line partisan tactics souring the electorate and crippling his beloved Republican Party for a generation, died. …†So he came up with ten handy suggestions on how to rescue his legacy.
Numbers 4 and 10 are keepers.
December 31st, 2006 at 9:36 amLet me guess – another corrupt government story the MSM WON’T be covering…
Of course it’s true. The actions of this Regime during its last 6 years of reign logically make no other conclusion possible. If it is the wrong thing to do, you can bet the Bush Administration did it.
Sheesh… Enough is enough. Impeach already.
December 31st, 2006 at 9:36 amLet me guess – another corrupt government story the MSM WON’T be covering…
Comment by unbelievable
Who can blame them? It’s not smooth, it’s not sexy, it’s got numbers and stuff…. They might have to stop crunching their potato chips in order to listen, and……..damnit! Got the remote all greasy trying to switch to the game show channel!
December 31st, 2006 at 9:59 am/sarcasm
Nobody here but us chickens, unbelievable.
I’ve already been out in the freezing fog, and it’s time to go back to bed. :)
December 31st, 2006 at 10:04 amGot the remote all greasy trying to switch to the game show channel!
/sarcasm
Comment by Zooey — December 31, 2006 @ 9:59 am
Unfortunately…it’s true.
I was just thinking about this as school resumes on Wednesday for me… about the future of these kids… They don’t watch the news, they don’t like to read books, and they are always looking for the easy way out. I have one student who told me that he didn’t really want to do anything with his life, but that since he has to do something to eat, he wants to do something where he can make a lot of money. They really don’t have any connection with reality. Sad.
December 31st, 2006 at 10:20 amI’ve already been out in the freezing fog, and it’s time to go back to bed. :)
Comment by Zooey — December 31, 2006 @ 10:04 am
It’s pouring here. I already tried to go back to bed… Good day to watch movies and nap I think. Gotta save up all that energy for partying until midnight… :)
December 31st, 2006 at 10:24 amhttp://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_carol_wo_061230_psychiatrist_says_bu.htm
Psychiatrist says Bush needs to be impeached for the good of “we the people”.
“We the people” have been and are being badly abused by the Bush administration. We’ve been disenfranchised by Diebold, a major Bush donor. Our Congress, our elected Representatives, have been corrupted, intimidated into going along with shredding of the Constitution. The incoming Democrats, whom we elected in protest, plan to play ball with Bush.
We’ve been lied into Iraq and our taxes are being used to support all kinds of atrocities there. Our reputation as an honorable nation has been destroyed, and hatred has been stirred up against us all over the world.
Our treasury is being drained, the public sector, on which we rely for essential services and infrastructure, is being starved. Rampant cronyism and ripoffs go unchecked.
Our land is being defiled with pollutants, clearcutting, exploitation of pristine areas. Standards of cleanliness and safety have been lowered or ignored. Public utilities are being “privatized”, including the health care system, the prison system, the energy system, so that the public welfare is subordinated to profit. The commons is being destroyed.
We are being systematically stripped of our freedoms. Freedom of the press has all but vanished, and the TV networks and major newspapers have become propaganda organs. Freedom of assembly and speech are being threatened. Individual privacy has disappeared. Habeas corpus is no more.
Our future is being mortgaged. We are leaving our kids an overheating planet, since the Bushies won’t acknowledge global warming, let alone do anything about it. We are leaving them an enormous debt, and a set of laws that allows fascism to be imposed at will.
Our emotions are being manipulated by the constant fake terror alerts. Meanwhile we are being terrorized into submission to Bush, with reports of concentration camps under construction by Halliburton, warrantless tapping of our phone calls and emails, scary legislation like the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act, and the Military Commissions Act.
I could go on and on- you, reader, can add your own outrages to the list. The point is, “we the people” are being abused by the members of the Executive Branch, whose job it is to carry out OUR will, the will of “we the people”.
We are like a wife trapped in an abusive marriage, who feels that duty and economics prevent her from leaving. Perhaps she still feels some love and loyalty to the husband who mistreats her. Perhaps she feels she deserves ill treatment, or that she’s too weak and pitiful to do anything about it. She becomes depressed and resigned to a dismal life.
We the people will become empowered, as we are supposed to be under our Constitution. We will be able to restore paper ballots and ensure fair elections. We will be able to address the pressing problems of global warming, budgetary crisis, nuclear pollution, and all the other ills which we will inherit from 6 years of Bush’s plundering. Our self-esteem as a nation, and our reputation among nations, will be restored.
Impeachment is the only way this can happen. Impeachment is peaceful, legal and democratic.
Power to the people!
December 31st, 2006 at 10:38 amIts only a matter of time before the out of control corruption will be called out.
Confucious say: Consider depth of snow before venturing with flip-flops.
December 31st, 2006 at 10:46 ami’m sure Gale Norton doesnt appreciate you impugning her character!!!
December 31st, 2006 at 11:06 amtheres an oil man in the white house. this kind of crap is inevitable. we need not be suprised at a government for of the oil, for the oil by the oil would engage in selling oil contracts.
December 31st, 2006 at 11:59 amthere are too many important people calling for the NEED to impeach that it would be hard to avoid… but the investigations will have to proceed and the evidence be brought to light and the public will demand it… then the congress will proceed accordingly…
yesterday, on AARs RING OF FIRE, bobby kennedy jr and mike papentonio were calling for it, saying it would be a most important civics lesson also…
thom hartmann had the NATIONs john nichols on his radio show talking about his latest book “The Genius of Impeachment”… he discussed the founders’ almost insistance on the procedure…
now you hear about ford’s “healing” the nation with his nixon pardon, “sparing the country” of the turmoil of impeachment – i think all that talk is out there to try to sway the populace against trying to impeach these latest criminals… i think when all the “high crimes AND misdemeanors” are listed the people will understand and demand it…
December 31st, 2006 at 12:11 pm.
wow – searching for an excerpt, i found this – A MUST READ:
In Praise of Impeachment
by John Nichols
December 25, 2006
A lot of progressives were perturbed when, immediately after the American people handed the House Democratic Caucus the power to check and balance the Bush presidency, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) repeated her enthusiasm-dampening pledge that “impeachment is off the table.â€
But there is nothing new about a Democratic Speaker of the House shying away from the “I†word, even when the leader knows that a Republican president merits official sanction. The same thing happened after Richard Nixon vanquished George McGovern in the 1972 election.
Grassroots Democrats and a few bold members of Congress began suggesting that issues raised by the Watergate burglary and related matters were serious enough to merit discussion of impeachment. House Speaker Carl Albert, House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill and most of their compatriots in the Democratic Party knew at the time that, despite the president’s protestations, Nixon was indeed a crook—and by extension, that he and his nefarious inner circle had committed acts that gave definition to the deliberately amorphous term “high crimes and misdemeanors.†Yet, they too took impeachment off the table—and kept it off—until the evolution of the scandal and the popular outcry it inspired forced them to put the most powerful tool in the arsenal of the republic back where it belonged.
Surely, Pelosi’s reticence is frustrating to patriotic Americans who know that we have reached the moment when, to borrow a thought from a Constitutional scholar named James Madison: “it may … be found necessary to impeach the President himself.†But history tells us that Pelosi’s pronouncement ought not be taken seriously, as she is, at best, a bit player in what could yet be an epic drama. Pelosi is a politician of the most cautious school. As such, her post-election assertion ought to be taken about as seriously as George Bush’s pre-election declaration that he wanted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to remain at the Pentagon until the end of the administration’s second term.
Why should we dismiss the Speaker-to-be’s adamant dismissal of impeachment as mere wordplay? Not because Pelosi is secretly plotting impeachment. Rather, because any meaningful movement to impeach a president—and, in the case of the Bush-Cheney administration, a vice president—does not come from the Speaker of the House. The Speaker is, in fact, often the last to know that the Constitutional moment has arrived.
Impeachment is an organic process, imagined as such by the founders. Its seed is not naturally planted in Washington, nor nurtured there. When an impeachment initiative is little more than a manifestation of inside-the-Beltway partisanship, as was the case with the Clinton impeachment of the late ’90s, its proponents invite an appropriate rebuke from the citizenry. But when proposals for impeachment are grounded in popular concern for the republic in general and the application of the rule of law in particular—as are moves to sanction Bush and Cheney for illegal war making and wiretapping—the process will begin at the grassroots and grow until it cannot be denied by Washington.
December 31st, 2006 at 12:25 pm[...]
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11704
.
What – ethical questions in the Bush Administration?
December 31st, 2006 at 12:43 pmConflict of interest? Bribery? Under-the-table negotiations?
Why, I never!
Bush is the guy who promised to restore dignity and honor.
Katy, I agree.
December 31st, 2006 at 12:47 pmWhen the course of events and investigations produce sufficient indisputable evidence to the public and to Congress, Pelosi will be forced to concede that the matter is “out of her hands” and she will adhere to the rule of law and proceed with the Bush impeachment and hopefully removal from office.
To do so prematurely will start the motions on the wrong foot and risk pushback – I am very impatient with this, but I think the pragmatic approach, as Pelosi appears to be following, hold the most promise for the desired result.
i didn’t realized that would be such a long post… i tried to condense even that (1/2 of article) but just couldn’t…
the ending is most important – and posting it takes nothing away from the rest:
Nancy Pelosi and her compatriots may say that impeachment is off the table now. But, soon enough, if the people lead as Jefferson and Madison intended, congressional Democrats will again learn that impeachment remains good—and necessary—politics.
january 4th – let them know – every day…
start with: BRING THEM HOME
uhhhhh… so much to do…
December 31st, 2006 at 1:04 pm